Koufax
Rob Suchan talks Strugglers, politics and the Koufax Book Club
Often called “The Best Band You’ve Never Heard,” Koufax brings a unique twist from the Midwest. The genre bending band combines horns, synths and lyrics that touch on such subjects as adultery to bring a sound that will make dance in its simplest form, but make you think about the world as a whole when get down to the nitty gritty of it all. Their newest release, Strugglers, is an entirely different sound for the band. HEAVE recently got to sit down and talk to Koufax brain trust Rob Suchan about his inspiration behind their newest work.
HEAVE: All right let’s start with the basics. What did you listen to growing up?
Rob Suchan: When I first started to listen to music as a little boy it was cassettes that my father was listening to. I was young and I was starting to hum the guitar parts to “Life In The Fast Lane” and stuff like that. I got a little older and started listening to GNR and Metallica. I had a friend whose older brother was into that kind of stuff. It was the stuff you could play the rifts to on an electrical guitar – that is when I first started playing. After that I got into what everybody else was into - Nirvana and that whole 90s group with the loud guitars. Basically I didn’t get into punk rock or post rock or any of that stuff until I met this kid in high school in 1995. Fugazi and stuff like that.
That pretty much changed how I viewed everything about music. It wasn’t even about “going to concerts.” It was now about “going to shows.” It really changed everything. I realized it didn’t have to be at a huge theatre, that it could be at someone’s house. It can be at a VFW Hall. I don’t even have to use Ticketmaster. Hell, I could bring a band I like to my town and have them play.
HEAVE: What were you doing with your life before Koufax?
Rob Suchan: I played in a couple other bands. I was actually in a band called Joshua even after I started Koufax. I was a touring guitarist for them in like 98 or 99. I went to Japan and Europe and was on a couple of US tours with them. I went to university and then stopped going to university once I realized Koufax could tour. I didn’t really realize how much we could tour until I became friends with The Get Up Kids. We met through a mutual friend while we were on Doghouse Records. We went to Europe with them and Braid. That is when I realized that I actually liked touring. It was like 1999 or 2000 when I think I decided I wasn’t going to be that guy that just goes to university.
HEAVE: What was the hardest thing Koufax had to deal with starting out?
Rob Suchan: We didn’t because Koufax is a weird band that got lucky enough to get signed because The Get Up Kids liked us. They were just getting really popular where their label, Vagrant, was like, “Hey we will put out some records of guys you like.” They gave them free reign to do that, so we had a very easy beginning, but now we pay dues. We still sleep on floors – whether it’s a day we are opening for Wilco or playing in front of five people. We have a van that always breaks down. I must really sound like an old fart who can’t recall any stories, but we surely have our hardships. We aren’t popular enough to not have a problem if something simple as a van break down happens.
HEAVE: Your lyrics are mostly viewed as pessimistic. Does that bother you?
Rob Suchan: It doesn’t bother me because I think they are right. They are pessimistic. I think it bothers me that I feel the need to write pessimistically. I feel like I’m being to myself in my lyrics and writing from my natural self. I was actually having a conversation similar to this last week with someone. We were talking about taboo in politics. I can go out and say, “Wow Bush an idiot – but so is Obama.” And people will be like, “What? How could you mean that?” And I am saying the same thing as, “Well the whole system of left and right is flawed.” People would be okay with that second statement, but not the first one. Let people know that I’m not a pessimist if you were to meet me.
HEAVE: Ok, you got it.
Rob Suchan: I do come off that way in the songs, though.
HEAVE: When you were writing Strugglers you were living in the Czech Republic.
Rob Suchan: Yeah. Most of the songs were written there, but some of them are older songs. I’ve actually been living in Czech Republic since 2003, but I only live there like three or four months out of the year. I guess it would be hard to say that I live there, but I guess that would be my most permanent home.
HEAVE: And Strugglers is a view of American life from the outside; almost a bigger picture type thing. Could you explain that a little?
Rob Suchan: Yeah – you know it’s one thing to see the news in your country, and it’s an entirely different thing to see the news about your country from another country. It’s odd to hear the view of American people about another country, and it’s equally odd to hear the view of the Czech people about Americans. I think that aspect makes me look at a bigger picture and not pay so much attention to the little details like, “Hey did you hear John McCain’s VP’s daughter is having a baby.” You lose those little details and you get a bigger picture. It’d be like watching the movie Control Room - the documentary about the Iraq War through the eyes of Al-Jazeera. Around here you get the news, and not the infotainment version you get in America. That was the biggest part.
HEAVE: So Strugglers is a tad different than anything else you’ve released. How did you get together with horn whiz Mark Southerland?
Rob Suchan: Mark Southerland is a Kansas City all-star and was spoken about in such high regard. I decided a long time ago that I wanted this morphed, double sax dirty greasy sounding album. I wanted this dirty sleazy type of saxophone thing – but I still wanted to do it tastefully. Everyone kept telling me that he was the guy. All the players are Kansas City players. So it worked out great.
HEAVE: A couple of the tracks sound straight out of Vaudeville.
Rob Suchan: Yeah yeah! The one thing with Koufax is that it always becomes an “it is what it is” thing. It always gets this weird dissonance to it, though. I’m not quite sure how it comes about. It just does.
HEAVE: nbsp; All your music friends are scattered across the world – so how does your songwriting process work?
Rob Suchan: I get a band together of guys I know and tell them what we are going for – and then we practice for like three days. Everyone gets their beautiful mistakes out of the way and then go on our way. I like to practice as least as possible. I want them to still like the song when we go into the studio. I don’t want them to be sick of it because we practiced it so many times.
You would get so rigid at the idea of the song that it wouldn’t have a life of it’s own anymore. The drummer, John Anderson, turned into the producer on this album was like, “No, no, no. I know you want to do it this way, but we are going this way. We are doing it totally different.” He was really the main catalyst for pushing the band into doing something we hadn’t done before. It was a good thing because we don’t want to do the same record again.
HEAVE: Ok so Social Life is my favorite record of yours, but what do you like to do when you are at home? What is a boring night for you?
Rob Suchan: Well, I hope I don’t have any boring nights! I got home from a tour last week and I had a week off to myself because I had to go a wedding and leave for Australia tomorrow. Basically what I do is lead the antithesis of tour life. I wake up when I want because I don’t have to be anywhere, but I try to wake up early because I would usually wake up late on tour because we were up until who knows when the night before for our show. I like to make breakfast. Maybe go for a run or read a book. Go get some tea somewhere. Do a domesticated thing like laundry. I can afford to nothing for a week and rest.
Rob Suchan: If I had a month off or something I would probably try to join a club. Maybe a book club.
HEAVE: Whatever happen to the Koufax Book Club?
Rob Suchan: You know I always kind of wanted to reinstate it. I know kids were reading the books, and people would always come up and talk to me about them. Kids at shows would always ask me why I haven’t posted a new book in a while. I think it was because Koufax was essentially inactive for two years. I was working on other stuff and Koufax wasn’t touring. I wasn’t updating the website. There is like one old journal entry there or something. I guess I wasn’t very gung-ho on doing it anymore. I still will once in a while having kids tell me to check out a certain book.
Rob Suchan: At our shows last year we had books up at our merch table that we thought kids should check out. They were all political stuff. I realized that I didn’t really want to play that tyrant role like, “Read this book and write 250 words about it!” stuff.
HEAVE: Sort of like a, “Hey I like this book so you will too.”
Rob Suchan: Yeah! I mean I like it, sure. But maybe we are different about global politics and stuff like that. I guess I had all of these new visions about things and I wanted everyone to share them and have these ideas out there. I think I just started to come off as an asshole. I should keep my mouth shut and not force things onto people.
HEAVE: Ok this is putting you on the spot, but if you could have wrote any song – what song would it have been?
Rob Suchan: Oh that does put me on the spot. I would probably say something like ELO (Electric Light Orchestra). Oh man. This is hard. I like ELO in the sense that they pay such detail to the arraignment but make it accessible so everyone will like it. It’s like a poppy yet intricate rock n’ roll song. All of that orchestration and detail.
HEAVE: I would have picked something that would have made me filthy rich.
Rob Suchan: When we got signed I thought about that. I bet we’d have a nice little paycheck if we had turned into a Get Up Kids clone. You know, we were like, “Hey this punk/emo/underground label wants to sign us and take us on tour. Let’s make an adult contemporary album with weird guitars. Let’s have two synthesizers as well!” It was career suicide – but I guess that what Koufax is. Career suicide.
Posted by Wes Soltis on Sep 15, 2008 @ 7:00 am
